cover image The Line

The Line

Jennifer Moxley, . . Post-Apollo, $15 (54pp) ISBN 978-0-942996-61-6

Aseriously depressing book of prose poems from a tremendously talented poet, Moxley's fourth collection laments the “horrors of wasted potential” while pushing with measured fervor into “beauty, inward looking, consumed by its own desire.” Aside from Moxley's signature devastating one-liners on conflicts inherent in living and writing (“the flesh envies the word's longevity but not its delayed effects”), the 41 prose pieces, most about half a page and at times seeming like very-long-lined verse, tackle questions that have vexed poets for ages: “The gift of minor eternity, on a brief mammalian scale, is not this relentless coming to be but the tale you will later tell about it.” Moxley (The Sense Record ) is deeply aware that poetic metatalk quickly grows wearisome if untethered to real Eros and anger, and keeps her explorations firmly grounded in experience: “Last night, believing yourself to be the bomb, you stripped him.... how could you be so stupid as to mistake deferential attention for ravenous sexual desire?” Moxley has captured an artist's mid-career ennui with shattering honesty and unflinching attention to the nuances of loss, verbal and otherwise. (June)